AUSTRALIA
9 News
A former Victorian Christian brother and teacher must be jailed for exploiting his position of power to sexually abuse a 10-year-old, a magistrate says.
But Stephen Francis Farrell walked from the Ballarat courtroom after appealing against his three-month jail term for molesting the boy, his third schoolboy victim.
Magistrate Michelle Hodgson jailed Farrell, 62, for indecently assaulting the boy while teaching at St Alipius School in Ballarat in the mid 1970s.
She said a message needed to be sent to the wider community that those who abused their roles of trust would be punished.
“Slowly but surely we have come to realise many of these sexual predators are people who have taken advantage of positions of power,” she said on Thursday.
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